Scott Johnson said this week that it had been an unusual year for Wales, which is one way of describing what has been an extraordinary 11 weeks, even by the standards of a country which has spent much of the past 25 years making the headlines for the wrong reasons.

The Australian today completes his three-match term as acting head coach following the departure last month of Mike Ruddock, whose effective dismissal has so vexed supporters and clubs that Welsh Rugby Union officials have spent the last two weeks on a whistle-stop tour explaining how and why the coach who last year presided over Wales's first grand slam since 1978 left in such an ignominious fashion.

Johnson is next week expected to announce whether he will be returning home to take up the offer of a place on Australia's management team as backs coach. He has said he would prefer to remain with Wales up to next year's World Cup, and possibly beyond, but maintained that the decision will be made by his family. Whatever he decides, the WRU will have problems finding Ruddock's replacement and there are three areas of concern.

Should Johnson stay or go?

The players want him to continue, as head or skills coach, but the overwhelming message from supporters on message boards and in newspaper letter columns this week is that he should go back to Australia. With the players buying totally into Johnson's approach, the problems which surfaced with Ruddock would recur if Johnson returned home and he was replaced by an outsider whose methods were different. Players like Stephen Jones, Shane Williams, Martyn Williams and Gareth Thomas, who were around in the Graham Henry era, rate him as the best coach they have ever worked with.

Johnson is more comfortable working behind the scenes than as head coach, but if he stayed on in a nominally subordinate role the WRU would have to find someone as a head coach or director of rugby. The union would be giving someone responsibility but not power and denying him the right to pick his own management team.

Johnson will not be applying for the position of head coach, but his shadow will loom large in the committee room when the decision is made. The proper relationship between the head coach and the players, who regard Johnson as "one of the lads", needs to be restored. That means a new management team.

Player power

By failing to back Ruddock in his final weeks, when the players defied him as a group on at least two occasions, the WRU has created a monster. It can deny player power had a part in Ruddock's going, but it is quite clear that the players feel empowered. Gareth Thomas said last week that the squad felt they should have an input into the appointment of the next coach, the clear message being that they did not want someone who would alter the tactical direction of the team. Players have this week again stressed how Johnson's gameplan is the only one for them.

The WRU chief executive Steve Lewis has been adamant that Ruddock's departure had nothing to do with the players, but they had expressed their discontent with him privately even before the fading of the cheers at the final whistle in Cardiff last year after the victory over Ireland had delivered the grand slam. The players are disciples of Johnson, whose tactical approach is based on an attacking game which is not tailored to take the opposition into account.

Ruddock has always analysed opponents minutely - he was a Plan B man. While agreeing with Johnson that Wales's relative lack of physical stature compared with the leading countries made it imperative that their game should be based on pace and movement, he argued that it should be more pragmatic. The two fell out and the players backed Johnson, but his first two matches in charge, a heavy defeat in Ireland and a draw at home to Italy, saw idealism lose out to reality.

The clubs

Johnson may be popular with the players, but the Welsh rugby public prefer Ruddock and there is a lobby for him to be reinstated. For that to happen, there would have to be changes at the top of the WRU, with Lewis and the chairman David Pickering under pressure to justify the mess the grand slam turned into.

Clubs are considering calling an emergency general meeting to call for the filling of the position of group chief executive, which fell empty when David Moffett left at the start of the year, and there have been calls for the WRU's board of directors to take a vote of no confidence in Pickering, which would trigger his resignation.

Ruddock's position was undermined, ultimately by his employers, and the authority of the post of head coach has to be restored. The WRU has to regain control and impose the new man on the players, not the other way around, otherwise coaches of the calibre of some who have been linked with the position, such as Warren Gatland, Robbie Deans and Phil Davies, will not be interested.